Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Nikki Louder
Label: Moonlee Records
Release: 2013
Length: 31:44
Rating: 4.5/5
Two years ago I gave in, and gave in hard, to the Kamnik garage phenomenon that had sifted and saturated every corner of the Slovenian club scene with its intense tension, the band Nikki Louder. Back then the trio spun a convincing record about the end of our world. Our World Died Yesterday was a statement. After an ending where everything has already been sung out, all that’s left is room for repetition. Instead of deciding whether punk, rock or music itself is dead, the Kamnik trio chose to sing an obituary for our whole dreamy, apathetic world. I’ll admit it: Nikki Louder crawled into my pores with the noise and squeals of their intense guitars, drums and bass, and rubbed themselves into my mind way past the milestone of oblivion, so I was downright glad this year when the news came that it was time for a sequel. The concept carries on with the golden age of humanity, and Golden Men is once again an ironic cannonade at the expense of our splendid, hollowed-out man. That cannonade is compact and confident, as solid and concrete-tight as the modern garage that Nikki Louder are sworn to as well, in idea and substance, through noise, post-rock mentality and aesthetic approach.
The nine tracks on Golden Men try in vain to shake off their ties to the past. The seemingly bang-it-out post-punk ethos is still strained through the filters of the same idea machine, and the three-hearted Kamnik band squeezed it all onto a new medium live, over three cold December days, right around the release of their second album, Our Day Died Yesterday. The record Golden Men was recorded completely live, took its contours in 2011 at the Dom kulture in Kamnik, and producer Gredoč helped with the birth. And that honesty, caught on vinyl and on squeezed-down CD alike, is still fascinating. The communication flow between the Cerar brothers on bass and drums and Blaž Sever on mic and guitar is lucid. There are plenty of guitar contours, echoes, squeals, feedback, distortion and mic noise, but every bit is here for a reason. Drums and bass are the reinforcing factor that carries the music from moment to moment, and the whole thing has a truly solid backbone and doesn’t fizzle out into nothing. The title track Golden Men is a juicy opening print that plants a statement at the world we live in. There’s a lot of narrowness and mental boxes that few can, or want to, break out of. Shackled in gold and imbecilic smallness, we’ve become the bearers of a new »Golden Age«. The age of oblivion is the cure for our lack, Nikki Louder stress. Musically, the noise of rock intensity just piles up and is beautifully articulated, and Golden Men becomes a new matrix for a more modern expression. Barefeet unfolds in an almost Radiohead-like way, a steely tangle of more minimalist, noise-wise even pop-ish guitars. You can never step into the same river twice, and the trio from Kamnik gladly wades barefoot and naked through the rapids of the river of time we live in. Blaž painfully squeezes out and sings the pain of impressions, and the poetics of emptiness is damn well spiced with the meditative meter of the rhythm and the repeating post-punk or post-rock guitars. Mouse Dress / Hey Joe is a combo that follows the red thread of madness and void with lyrical simplicity and dadaist wordplay in English. The musical foundation stays just as dense and dreamy. The music stays just as saturated and meditatively sedated, and the claustrophobic feeling of empty space is reinforced by the production in every line of a post-apocalyptic haiku. In the second part, Hey Joe, instead of Hendrix’s purity and melody, all that grows is the intensity of tension, violence and paranoia. »Hey Joe where’s your queen? / Hey Joe where’s your precious?« hints at the slaughter of ideals, but the question is whether it wasn’t the infamous Joe himself who shot them down and buried them?
Bridge To Infinity is one of the more articulate moments on this walk through the mental gaps of golden humanity. Nikki Louder stress that the world is lost in the wilderness and the prospect of eternity offers no way out. Indian Companion, a shamanic sage howling with a thousand wolves, is just an allegory of what a person actually has to be in this day and age. When you’re with the wolves, you howl like a wolf, and Nikki Louder weave the threads of madness so subtly and with such feel that nothing jars. The intense, grotesque caricature of the world is meant for dissection and analysis, and the simple lines are just a tool for the catharsis of the musical channels. And that’s the catch, if I may stress it. Golden Men is a whole from which nothing can be pulled out without breaking the mental meditation, which, if you think about it, isn’t even supposed to relax and soothe you. The past echoes of thoughts and chords are a trap that catches the fragile butterflies of unprepared minds. Past Is A Trap is the moment you realize that too late. Eyes like kaleidoscopes, hit by the moment of enlightenment, we walk happily once more down the road of timelessness and infinity. The track tells of a modern-day pursuit of Jack Kerouac’s ideal, by which you have to step boldly onto the dusty road and wander. We’re all vagabonds walking our own paths, and happy is the one who doesn’t know where they’re going, because then they’re always on the right path and never get lost. Though on this wandering, that wanderer called Man is sometimes damn lonely. The closing One Day Friends sings precisely about the fact that we can’t make any return to a moment in the past, but there’s always hope that something good and positive comes back. Nikki Louder aren’t here to soothe pain; they like to open wounds. And that act is bloodthirsty, noisy and sadistically sweet. There’s plenty of garage noise contours, and under the whole thing you can even find a jazzy dreaminess. And in the smoke of seasoned and smoked-out thoughts, the train rolls on to the last stop, the track One Day Friends, which wraps up the pompous trip down the side roads of our Golden Age in style, without a trace of loose ends.
I have to admit that Golden Men , in its simple, simplistic way of direct, caustic bluntness, is an aesthetically perfect record, one that will damn well wring you out and fill every corner of your consciousness so that you resonate and, once you reach a state of harmony, voluntarily explode. Nikki Louder are more than modern-day bashers and art-for-art’s-sake hustlers. Nikki Louder are a band with a clear idea and strong messages that leave plenty of room for your own interpretation and for gathering scraps of dreamed-up dreams. The music is beautiful and at the same time chaotically scruffy. Beauty remains nonetheless, and the band’s potency is undoubted and undeniable. I have to admit I’m pleasantly surprised that the Slovenian club scene, the Slovenian underground, the underworld of Slovenian rock has so many wonderful musicians who can pour so many lovely pearls into your palms and your ears. Nikki Louder are one of the more progressive providers of this kind of satisfaction here, and it’ll be interesting to hear how the band’s conceptual story continues. After two outstanding records and a first EP, my expectations at least are damn high. After brilliance there’s simply no room for mediocrity. After two splendid concepts it makes no sense to settle for anything less than an upgrade, but the question is whether the boys are capable of it. The ball is in their court this time.
Lineup
Blaž Sever – guitar, vocals
Peter Cerar – bass guitar, guitar
Luka Cerar – drums
Production
Gredoč & Nikki Louder
Tracklist
- Golden Men
- Barefeet
- Mouse Dress / Hey Joe
- Bridge To Infinity
- Indian Companion
- Past Is A Trap
- Bro Way
- Leaking
- One Day Friends
